How Atari Plans to Bring Itself Back From the Dead

A screenshot from Haunted House for iOS, one of the recently released games from Atari. Image: Atari

For techies of a certain age, few brands inspire as much nostalgia as Atari. They remember the heyday in the 1970s and 80s, when its two-dimensional arcade game Pong was the epitome of fun and the Atari 2600 videogame console was the epitome of cool. But for many young gamers today, their closest brush with Atari is in the retro T-shirt section of their local Urban Outfitters.

Fred Chesnais wants to change that. As Atari’s new CEO and majority shareholder, Chesnais is leading what he hopes will be a turnaround of the 42-year-old brand, which emerged from bankruptcy proceedings last year. For Chesnais, who also served as Atari’s CEO between 2004 and 2007, it’s a second chance to make Atari relevant to a new generation.

Fred Chesnais. Image: AtariHis first step: let other people be Atari. Rather than immediately trying to reclaim Atari’s place as a top gaming company–a goal that has eluded many other CEOs with many different comeback strategies over the years–he’s planning on licensing that almighty brand to other studios who are already adept at building games for today’s audience. “Corporations die,” he says. “Brands like Atari don’t.”

It’s a plan that Chesnais says will allow his lean team of 10 employees to take on less risk and experiment with new products and mediums until they find a hit. If successful–and Chesnais knows as well as anyone that he may not be–he hopes that the dark days of Atari will have been nothing more than “a bad scene in what is a very good movie overall.” Here’s how he hopes to do it.

Games Are Dead. Long Live Games.

Games, of course, will still be part of Atari’s future. But this time, Atari is targeting the mobile and online gaming markets, not consoles. In other words, says Chesnais, “no boxes.”

The Atari team will create both new versions of older titles, as well as completely new games based on trends that have emerged in the gaming industry. For instance, after witnessing the rise of the survival video game genre, Atari is developing a new version of one of its classic titles, Asteroids, an arcade shooting game that was first released in 1979. In the new mobile game, players have to figure out how to survive on an asteroid after their spaceship crashes into it. “It’s social, so the more friends you have the better, and you can play anywhere because it’s on mobile,” says Chesnais, who revived another failed gaming brand called MicroProse in 2007 (1). “It’s just much more relevant.”

Since Chesnais returned to Atari, the company has released four new games, including Haunted House and Roller Coaster Tycoon, and it has a slew of additional games set to be released this fall.

Social Gambling

Online gambling for real money may be illegal in the United States today, but in Europe and elsewhere, the market is growing exponentially. One research firm, Juniper Research, recently estimated that by 2018, 164 million people will be playing mobile gambling games, from slot machine games to poker. “We want to be there,” Chesnais says.

To do that, Atari is partnering with two gaming startups already working in the gambling game space. FlowPlay, the company behind the game Vegas World, will work with the company to build Atari Casino, a social casino game in which players can play for virtual money, while another startup called Pariplay will build a game of the same name where players bet with real money.

Entering the mobile gambling market, Chesnais says, will let Atari reach audiences who might never otherwise have played one of its games.

Lights, Camera, Action

Perhaps the biggest departure for Atari is the launch of Atari TV, which will create original video content for YouTube and elsewhere. According to Chesnais: “We’re not just competing against gaming companies anymore. At the end of the day, it’s a competition for the user’s time.” For younger audiences, YouTube dominates that time.

The first big project for Atari TV is a daily video blog called TheRealPele.com that trails Pele, the soccer phenom, throughout the upcoming World Cup in Brazil. But this, Chesnais says, is just the entry point into what he sees as a booming online video market. “We have to be there,” he says. “We cannot ignore another revolution.”

1. Correction: 3:39 pm EST 06/11/14 An earlier version of this post mistakenly reported that Chesnais founded the company MicroProse in 2007. Chesnais revived the brand MicroProse, which was first founded in 1982.